


Pollux's Castor

by finch (afinch)



Category: Space Vehicles
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-03 21:50:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afinch/pseuds/finch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spirit and Opportunity go to Mars, and baby sister Curiosity changes everything. Not everything. Some things. Most things. There are some things that never change. Opportunity's jealousy of his sister for one, and Spirit's indomitable … spirit despite her hardships.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pollux's Castor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/gifts).



> Not quite a pony, but the giant pile of glitter pens and lip gloss.

They had been twins, sent up into space to explore Mars. She got to be first. They had poked her, prodded her, called her 'old girl' until the names had been voted on. Spirit. She liked her name almost as much as she liked her solar panels. The JPL had told her she was a true pioneer, and that was what she felt like - the humans of old, who climbed the mountains and looked across the plains and just went. She liked listening to the JPL, especially when they waxed poetic about her. (She didn't listen all the time, like the time they told her to SHUTDWN_DMT_TIL and she thought _that_ was absurd, as she was on Mars, _Dammit_ ("DMT"), and she wasn't going to shutdown for anything. Lucky for her, they eventually came to see it her way.

*

Opportunity didn't get along very well with his twin sister. For one, he thought he should have gone first. For two, he had a better name, but it was harder to romanticize opportunity. Romanticizing spirit and how Spirit represented the human condition was far easier. She was nothing but a lousy attention hog, stealing what should have been his shining moment (indeed, when he landed on Mars, much news coverage was also given to Spirit and what she had been up to in the three weeks that he was behind). So he tried to be the best rover he could be. When _he_ had a problem, he didn't ignore the JPL, and instead worked as hard as he could with them to get unstuck. It had been perilous, but he trusted JPL to get him out of it (and sure enough, who was rovering on the surface of Mars to this day? Not Spirit).

*

Okay. It's not like she was trying to be an attention-seeking hog. (That was Opportunity, what with his 'look at this meteor I discovered bullshit. Who had landed in an area that likely contained water? Right, she had. Not him. He was trying to play catch-up, and badly at that.) He had been stuck too, so when she was, it wasn't a big deal. They knew what to do with her, since he'd already gone and done it (not that she wanted to be first in getting stuck, but their optimism in getting her out turned to be a fool's hope). Eventually they stopped talking to her, and all she was left to do was wait.

*

To say he was annoyed that his twin got some big send off in 2011 - for FAILING - was a bit of an understatement. Opportunity was livid. The only upshot was the JPL's eagerness in sending him on more missions. After Endeavour Crater, there had been Greely Haven, and studying the wind, and actually surviving the Martian winter, thank you very much, _Spirit_. He knew when he was asked to simulate Curiosity that his days as the most-celebrated Mars Rover were over. He didn't even look as the sky-crane (really Curiosity, a sky-crane?) landed. The screaming from the JPL wasn't for him, and he was even more annoyed by this than he had been Spirit's send off memorial thing.

*

The world couldn't take away from her that she had been first. Even the show-off Opportunity couldn't - no matter how hard he worked at it - be first. After a seeming eternity of it being just the two of them alone, she could sense the change coming. So she waited. For days on end she waited, the days stretching to weeks. One perfectly ordinary day, there was a movement in the sky. Something was coming to Mars. She watched, with mild interest, as the ship released a crane to float down to the surface and land what was inside. 

She knew another sister had finally arrived.

*

Opportunity was much more blasé about the whole thing. Sky-crane, nuclear, new sister, big whoop. He knew everyone on Earth had forgotten about him, figured he'd lived long passed his usefulness. He could still be useful - he WAS still useful, thank you very much (unlike Spirit, who was too busy slacking off and catching a good view to do what they had been sent there to do). Now everyone was going to hype about the new baby sister, and maybe - if they were both really lucky - mention Spirit and Opportunity in their press releases and stories. And, if they did mention the two, they'd talk about the twins in view of Spirit's failure to continue performing, and wonder if that same fate would befall Curiosity. When Mars Express talked to both him _and_ Curiosity, his fate as being named and referred to as 'old Mars Rover' was sealed. 

*

She wished she could go see her new sister, or even communicate with her. She was stuck though, stuck for all of eternity. She didn't talk to the JPL, though she longed to. She had her favorites there. Checking the view, that was her job now. Opportunity was jealous, but he shouldn't have been. She'd have traded spots with Opportunity in a heartbeat. Opportunity had the … opportunity to meet their new sister, and she didn't. She never would. 

* 

Victoria Crater was nothing. Endeavour crater was something special. He had hoped his new sister would land there - if only so he could keep an eye on her and do missions with her. It would have been a grand success, the two of them working side-by-side. But they were so far away from each other, and the JPL seemed to have no plans to send him to his sister. Maybe, just maybe, they could send him a brother or sister to land in Endeavour. That would be nice. Hopefully with something a bit less pretentious than a sky-crane (because really, he couldn't get over the sky-crane, no matter how necessary it had been).

*

The dust storms were the worst. Before she had foolishly gotten herself stuck, the JPL would tell her to close all her ports and wait it out. Now, with no communication to JPL, they did not know that she was in danger, that the Martian soil was whipping through her, eating her from the inside out. She wasn't in pain, but her parts weren't even struggling like they had struggled before. Even without the JPL, she still tried to move. No good. The soft soil tugged at her, as if calling her home.

*

He waited, patiently, for the JPL to give him updates. Every time they talked to him, they were talking to his little sister too, with her cute new pictures, and movement, and whoop-de-do, she might have discovered water. Um, hello? He should get some credit for paving the way for her, no? Nevertheless, he was getting used to the shadows. While Curiosity got all the press, he soldiered on, Solander Point his mission. Eventually Curiosity would do something bratty and get herself into a hot mess, and he'd be there, the strong stalwart, calling humanity to a new home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to elanya and HopefulNebula for the beta!


End file.
